ded of your enmity against God! ye are not born friends, though ye
be born within the visible church. How dreadful a thing is it, to have the
Most High and terrible God against you, to do to you according to your
deservings! Ye all know this, we are enemies to God by nature, I pray you,
is it but a name? Is it not worthy deep consideration? But who considereth
this matter? If ye lose a friend, ye will be troubled, and the more
behoveful your friend was, the more troubled you will be. If a great and
potent nation proclaimed war against us, we cannot but be sensible of it,
but alas! who considereth the great breach that is between God and all
men, occasioned by the first man's transgression and rebellion! It is one
of the degrees of health, to know the disease, and I may call it a degree
of peace, a kind of preparation to peace, to know the enmity, and not
generally to know it, but to ponder it till the heart be affected with it,
to call a council of all the faculties and affections of the soul to
consider the great imminent danger of man's commonwealth. What is it, I
pray you, that is the greatest obstruction of men's making peace with God,
that makes the breach irreparable, and the wound incurable? It is this,
certainly, no man apprehendeth it aright, we entertain good thoughts of
our friendship with God, or that it is easy to be reconciled. Who seeth
such a wide breach between God and man, that all the merits of angels and
men could not make it up? Who seeth the price of redemption so precious,
as it must cease for ever, for all that men and angels can do? Is not
every man offering God satisfaction, either his tears, or sorrow, or
amendment in time coming, or all of them? Do not men undertake to pacify
God with external ordinances, and think it may suffice for their sins?
Certainly ye are ignorant of the infinite separation between God and man,
who imagine a treaty with him yourselves, or that ever ye can come unto
speaking terms, and therefore is this war and enmity perpetual; therefore
there is no peace, when ye cry, Peace, peace! When ye have peace within
you, and say that ye have peace with God, yet certainly, the Lord thy God
is against thee, and will not spare thee, Deut. xxix. 19. Many of you
bless yourselves in your own hearts, when ye hear the curse and
threatening of the law, ye say, God forbid that all that were true. Well,
thus saith the Lord, All these curses that are written in this book shall
be upon thee,